My blog provides alternative view on Kashmir dispute and politics of South Asia, especially India Pakistan relations. It aims to educate people that they can make informed judgements.

Monday, 16 April 2018

I am Pashteen - Gul Bukhari’s article which wasn’t published in The Nation today

I am Pashteen - Gul Bukhari’s article
which wasn’t published in The Nation today

Editor’s
note: The following article by Gul Bukhari could not published
by The Nation today for discussing Pashtun Tahafuz Movement. However, we at
Naya Daur believe that the article does not criticise any state institution but
is an attempt to address the misconceptions about PTM and therefore must reach the
audience.

General Bajwa’s comments on PTM

It
is astonishing that the country’s military leadership has alluded to the
Pashtun Tahafuz Movement as ‘engineered’, with foreign connections. On Thursday
the army chief said that ‘engineered protests’ will not be allowed to reverse
the gains of counter-terrorism operations and cautioned the nation against
forgetting sacrifices of the ‘real heros’, regretting that ‘no sooner had peace
returned to FATA than a movement was started’. For the second time in a week on
Saturday, the army chief again alluded to the movement as a ‘hybrid war’ being
waged on Pakistan to internally weaken the country, but also noted that ‘the
enemies were failing to divide the country on the basis of ethnicity and other
identities.’ Both times he neither named the PTM nor its leaders.

Setting
aside the noise and obfuscation surrounding the movement, first one need only
look at the demands of the movement, asking for the restoration of the same
fundamental rights that most citizens of other provinces enjoy. Manzoor, and
the other leaders, ask to produce in courts of law persons made forcibly
missing; they ask for a life of dignity – to not be humiliated for hours at
military check-posts while commuting; they ask for their area to be cleared of
landmines that are still killing and maiming them; they ask not to be
collectively punished for crimes by unknown persons; and they ask for the
killer of Naqeebullah Mehsood to be brought to justice. To bring to life the
nature of their demands, the leaders of the movement are telling stories of
human tragedy in every other household of FATA, stories that earlier remained
hidden from view because of a lack of access to the media in FATA.

Support from Afghanistan?

How
such demands can be engineered by foreign forces is beyond comprehension.
Turned on its head, such statements would imply that the enemies of Pakistan
want its citizens to have a life of peace and dignity, but the state does not.
It makes no sense whatsoever.

Do we Pakistanis not
sympathise with and support the Kashmiris in India? Does that make the uprising
in Indian held Kashmir engineered by Pakistan? No it does not.

However,
if the statement is in reaction to the sympathy the movement has found among
Afghan Pashtuns and in others around the world, then the reaction should itself
be analysed with common sense. Firstly, the people of FATA have tribes and
families living across the Durand Line and would find natural sympathy and empathy
by a people who have lived with similar horrors of war for decades. The support
and sympathy are natural, not born out of enmity for the Pakistani state. I
would urge the establishment to also consider this: do we Pakistanis not
sympathise with and support the Kashmiris in India? Does that make the uprising
in Indian held Kashmir engineered by Pakistan? No it does not. Do we not lend
moral support to the Palestinians, or to the Rohingya in Burma? Are those not
natural and human reactions of horror and sympathy? They make not the
intefadahs engineered by Pakistan!

We love our country as much as you do

Expressions
of support for the PTM have come from across Pakistan. To name but a few, is
Imran Khan, a Pashtun, also playing in foreign hands in asking for justice for
the people of FATA? Is Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a Sindhi son of the soil, also
an enemy of the sate of Pakistan? Am I, a Punjabi, a part of the ‘hybrid war’
being waged on Pakistan? Or are Babar Sattar and Raza Rumi, also Punjabis, all
‘anti-state’ elements? Are senators Afrasiab Khattak, Syed Ali Raza Abidi,
Mushahid Husain Saiyid waging war on the country? No, Sir, we all love our
country and our people. We want peace, education, dignity, and security for all
our countrymen and women. If wanting this for Pakistanis is treason, then we
are traitors.

At one level or
another, every ethnicity and most Pakistanis have felt the blow of violation of
their fundamental rights.

I
would also urge the establishment to consider how members of the Tehreek Labbiak
Ya Rasool Allah are ‘our people’ to be engaged with, and at the cost of
paralyzing the government of Pakistan, while PTM’s peaceful protestors merely
asking for fundamental rights are foreign agents not be allowed to protest?

PTM not dividing but uniting Pakistan

To
address the concern that the PTM is dividing the country on ethnic lines, I
would assert that to the contrary, the movement is uniting ethnicities because
of human empathy which rises above differences of ethnicity, cast or creed. The
voices of support belong not just to the Pashtun, but also to the Punjabi,
Mohajir, Sindhi and Baloch. Another reason the sympathy and support cuts across
ethnicities is that the demand for fundamental rights also resonates with the
rest. At one level or another, every ethnicity and most Pakistanis have felt
the blow of violation of their fundamental rights.

Dismal state of freedom of speech in the country

Take
the right of free speech. Almost everyone who has dissented has seen their
right being violated either by being muted, blacked out, by threat or by death.
Journalists are beaten and killed in this country for doing their duty, no
matter their ethnicity. Take the right to information. As we speak the largest
news group is blacked out in most parts of the country, without explanation or
cause. Take the right to security. Punjabi bloggers were forcibly disappeared
and tortured before being released mysteriously. Take the right to education.
Universities are made to cancel events meant for their students to listen, to
think and to debate.

Then
take it as good news Manzur Pashteen and his movement is uniting the people of
Pakistan like never before. And the reasons are both sympathy and empathy.

The criticism on army

If
what rankles is slogans of ‘ye jo dehshat gardi hai, iss ke peechay wardi hai’,
then what is needed is wisdom and courage to not only understand what is meant
by it, but also to acknowledge the people’s anger at the tragedies they have
suffered at the hands of state policies. It should not be hard to do so, given
that Pakistan army’s own generals, generals Musharraf and Hameed Gul to name
two, have stated that the military amassed religious militants in FATA as a
tool of foreign policy.

Who
does not know this? For decades the people of FATA have paid with their lives
for the militants and then the subsequent war imposed on them. People across
the rest of Pakistan have also paid with their lives, but not in as great
numbers.

Those soldiers were ours too

The
‘real heroes’ are indeed heroes. Not a single man or woman of any ethnicity can
forget their sacrifices. We are all deeply grateful to them. But the heroes and
victims are not either, or. The fact that our military soldiers and officers
lost their lives in fighting the same militants the institution once planted on
our soil, does not negate the suffering of the people. Both are true and real,
both need to be acknowledged for healing to take place. We weep as much for our
fallen soldiers and officers as we do for the civilian casualties of
self-harming policies of the state.

In
fighting the militancy, human rights abuses were also committed. Those too need
to be acknowledged and ceased for healing to take place. The demand for ceasing
of those violations is all there is to the PTM, which many of us now see not
just as the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, but as the Pakistan Tahafuz Movement. The
state should engage with the movement, instead of accusing it without evidence.
By and large, the citizenry is now cynical of such accusations because of the
jaded use of such tactics for seventy years.

About Me

Dr Shabir Choudhry has done extensive research on the issue of Kashmir and Indo Pakistan relations. He passed BA Honours in Politics and History, and Mphil in International Relations (title of the thesis, ‘Kashmir and Partition of India’); and title of his PhD thesis is ‘Kashmir- An issue of a nation not a dispute of a land’.

Apart from this Dr Shabir Choudhry passed Post Graduates Certificates in Education, and NVQ Assessor’s qualifications; and taught English in London.

Political Achievements

Founder member of JKLF (Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front established in 1977) and got elected as a Press Secretary in 1984.

Became its Secretary General in 1985, and resigned from this post in 1996.

Got elected President of JKLF and Europe in May 1999, and decided not to contest in elections of July 2001.

Said good - bye to the JKLF as it is in many groups and is largely seen as advancing a Pakistani agenda on Kashmir dispute, and set up a new party Kashmir National Party in May 2008.

.

At present, he is:

·Spokesman Kashmir National Party and Director Diplomatic Committee;

·Spokesman for International KashmirAlliance;

·Founder member and Director Institute of Kashmir Affairs;

Previously

·A founder Member and Trustee/ Director of London based registered charity, Kashmir Foundation International and resigned from this position in August 2001.

·Regularly take part in the Sessions of the UN Human Rights (Commission) now Council in Geneva; and address various conferences and seminars to oppose violence and highlight the Kashmir cause.

·Participated in a Round Table Conference on Kashmir, organised by Socialist Group of European Parliament in Brussels in 1993.

·Addressed as a Chief Guest in a seminar on issue of Mangla Dam during the UN Sub Commission’s proceedings in August 2003.

·Addressed as a key - note speaker in a seminar on the issue of Gilgit and Baltistan, organised by Association of British Kashmiris.

·Addressed as a keynote speaker on human rights conference in Paris in 1991.

·Addressed at CambridgeUniversity as a Chief Guest in a conference on Kashmir in 1990.

·Addressed as a keynote speaker at New Delhi conference on Kashmir, which was part of Track Two diplomacy in November 2000.

·In September 2008, addressed a Conference arranged by Interfaith International in Geneva, topic of which was:“Kashmir Issue, Terrorism and Human Rights”.

·Addressed as a speaker in a NGO Conference on Self - Determination in Geneva in August 2000.

·Addressed as a keynote speaker in a fringe meeting of Liberal Democrats at their Annual Conference in Brighton in 1995.

·Participated in World Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993.

·Before President Clinton's visit to India and Pakistan in 2000, lead a JKLF delegation to the State Department to discuss Kashmir dispute and situation in South Asia.

·Also had two rounds of meetings with senior State Department officials before President Musharraf’s meeting to Washington in June 2003.

·Apart from that had meetings with senior officials including Ministers of different countries, and also held many meetings with the State Department and Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials on number of occasions.

·Played important role in advancing a Kashmiri perspective on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir; and also helped Baroness Emma Nicholson with her report ‘Kashmir: present situation and future prospects’, which was adopted by the European Parliament in May 2007.

·Won first prize in an essay competition in Urdu in 1976. It was organised by High Commission of Pakistan in London, and title of the essay was 'Qaaid-e- Azam's role in Islamic History'.

·Apart from that have addressed conferences in Brussels, Geneva, Toronto, Islamabad, Delhi, and

Publications

·Got first Urdu novel ‘Fareena’ published at the age of eighteen.

·Second Urdu novel ‘Bay-Khataa’ which was about the problems of Asian youths living in UK published in 1983.

·Third Urdu book ‘Pakistan and Kashmiri struggle for independence’ published in 1990.

·Fourth Urdu book is also on Kashmiri struggle, 'Is an independent Kashmir a conspiracy?'

·Apart from that has twenty books and booklets published in English on various aspects of the Kashmiri struggle.

·Recent publications are: Kashmir dispute as I see it

·Different perspective on Kashmir

·JKLF visit to Pakistan Administered Kashmir

·Kashmir Needs Change of Heart

·If not self - determination then what?

·Emma Nicholson report- who has won?

·Struggle for independence, Jihad or proxy war (Introduction by Baroness Emma Nicholson)

·

Future publications

Following books were completed some time ago and shall be published in near future:

In Search of Freedom - My visit to Srinagar and Islamabad

Kashmir and Partition of India

A brief background

Dr Shabir Choudhry was born in a small village called Nakker Shimali (near Panjeri) in District Bhimber, Azad Kashmir. He went to UK in 1966, and like other people from the region, holds a dual nationality. He left secondary school in 1970 with no qualifications and began his life as a textile worker.

In 1975 he started part time studies and passed Matriculation from Government High School Panjeri, passed ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels from UK, and resumed full time degree course in 1981, and passed BA (Hons) in Politics and History in 1984.

He continued full time and part time jobs until he got his Mphil. He passed his PGCE (Post Graduates Certificate in Education) in 1990, and then started full time job as a Lecturer. Due to health problems he resigned from teaching in 1999. At present he is self - employed, provides private tuition, translation and interpretation and consultancy.

Through out his adult life he has actively worked for the cause of Kashmir, and even during long illness he effectively carried out his responsibilities as a leader of the JKLF, a ‘prolific writer’ and consistent campaigner of Rights Movement and peace in Jammu and Kashmir and South Asia.